


Negative Space

by Myalpha



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky!Cap, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fork-In-The-Road AU, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Reverse Winter Soldier AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 08:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1738733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myalpha/pseuds/Myalpha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Steve falls from the train not Bucky, but they have to carry on anyway because they're so close to destroying Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Space

They were storming the train side by side. Him and Steve.

 

They'd got the call from HQ a few hours before. A German army train was about to pass by, transporting a key Hydra scientist. Arnim Zola, to be specific, the very same scientist responsible for the experimentation on, and torture of, Bucky himself. Their mission was to intercept the train, and capture the scientist.

 

Bucky didn't know what to expect. None of them did, really. Everything of Hydra's they'd encountered so ultramodern they didn't know whether they were facing just an ordinary train, or some kind of highly-modified technological monster.

 

Bucky was both grateful and disappointed to find, upon boarding it, that the train itself was almost painfully standard – all grey corrugated metal and neatly ordered half-empty cargo compartments.

 

So they were storming the train, side by side, working their way through the carriages methodically, Bucky always at Steve's left, just the way it should be.

 

It was always him and Steve. Had always been, even since they were kids. Even if some days it seemed their roles were mostly reversed.

 

These days, it was Steve charging in to protect Bucky- to save the day, to take out their attackers - Bucky mused as Steve... Captain America's... shield flew through the air with a hum. The Hydra soldier previously attempting to kill Bucky slumped to the ground - either dead or unconscious, Bucky didn't care much to look - as the shield met its target with pinpoint accuracy.

 

“I had him on the ropes,” he protested cockily, mimicking exactly what Steve used to say to him back home. Back when Steve was the one who needed protecting after getting into fights in Brooklyn's dingy back alleys.

 

Steve smiled, a big, genuine smile with a hint of sass playing around the edges. Neither of them had much cause for smiling too often anymore. “I know you did.” he replied, a slight chuckle in his voice at the personal joke.

 

Bucky took some comfort in the fact that whatever else changed, at least they always still had their playful banter... Even if it was all mixed up and wrong that Bucky was no longer able to protect Steve the way he should be.

 

But Steve's moment of distraction while bantering with Bucky had clearly taken too long.

 

One moment, the carriage was completely empty but for the two of them. The next, there was a Hydra soldier right in front of Steve – Bucky could have sworn he just appeared out of thin air.

 

All in black, standard Hydra-issue face mask obscuring Bucky's view of his face, the soldier stood. Their raised weapon was unlike anything Bucky had ever seen, even by Hydra standards. It glowed from the inside with fiery power, and appeared to emit a large and powerful fireball in leu of bullets or explosive. Bucky thought it was like the wrath of the gods, in firearm form.

 

Steve tried to raise his shield defensively, but for once his reflexes weren't fast enough. The blast hit him square in the gut, the force of the explosion causing him to fly backwards and tearing a hole in the side of the train. Steve was left dangling precariously from only a tiny scrap of metal on the side of the torn carriage, his body blowing from the train in the rushing wind like washing on a line.

 

There wasn't time to talk, wasn't time to think. He couldn't even yell out – everything was moving in slow motion.

 

Over the intercom he heard Zola barking the order to fire upon Steve again, ordering the Hydra agent to kill him for good. At least, Bucky thought it was an intercom, he was having trouble processing exactly how or from where he was heard it. Everything had narrowed to 'protect Steve at all costs'.

 

Weapons empty, and knowing he stood no chance in overpowering a Hydra soldier unarmed, Bucky instead reached for Steve's shield, where it had fallen to the floor in the chaos.

 

The Hydra agent was still standing in the centre of the carriage, weapon already fully recharged and aimed squarely at Steve. Bucky, finally having grabbed the shield, tried to leap in front of the blast, deflecting it.but it was too late. He wasn't fast enough. He failed.

 

The blast hit Steve squarely in the chest. It was a miracle, really, that he still managed to hold on to the train at all. There was so much blood everywhere, his uniform torn to shreds and patches of red spreading across his body like a flood tide.

 

Bucky raised the shield, still strapped to his arm, as forcefully as he could – slamming it into the agent's face. They fell to the floor, unconscious. Retrieving the enemy's gun from their own holster, Bucky fired two shots directly into their skull. It would be wrong to say he didn't take the smallest bit of pleasure from it.

 

However, not sparing another second, he dropped both the gun and the shield and ran to the edge of the gaping hole. He could see from a glance that Steve was barely able to hang on – and worse still, he seemed about to loose conciousness.

 

There was no time.

 

“Steve! Hang on. Grab my hand!” Bucky called, attempting to reach for him by leaning part-way out of the carriage.

 

Obediently, desperately, Steve let go with one hand, leaving only one hand clutching to the rail, and attempted to reach for Bucky's outstretched hand. As Steve moved one hand to grip Bucky's his grip on the train slipped. Unable to reach Bucky's outstretched arm, he began to fall.

 

Bucky was unable to do anything. It was like he was put there just to watch. He screamed, loud and long, as he watched his entire world slip through his fingers.

 

\- - -

 

It was only later that same day when Bucky Barnes - the closest thing to Steve Rogers short of the man himself - was handed the shield, the costume, the heavy mantle of Captain America, and given orders to fill in.

 

Ever the good soldier, he obeyed with only few qualms. After all, he was sure Steve wouldn't mind once he returned.

 

But they never were able to recover the body, and 'filling in' slowly, subtly, transformed into 'becoming'.

 

Several units ran reconnaissance missions around the base of the cliffs, attempting to locate a body or find any clues, but there was no signs of survival.

 

Scientists did numerous calculations and determined that given his state when he fell, the drop alone would have killed him, even assuming he managed to land on snow and not rocks or ice.

 

The missions, the days, the weeks, dragged on. Teams of scientists, countless missions, and numerous casualties returned with no Captain to show for their efforts. Yes, Captain America was a national hero. But there was a war on, and the army just simply couldn't justify spending so much time money looking for him – not with Hydra finally on the run.

 

So they gave up the search, confidentially and under great secrecy declared Captain America dead, and moved their focus elsewhere.

 

Bucky was numb.

 

But there was a war on. And what had to be done, had to be done. So he hefted his (...Steve's) shield, straightened his (..Steve's) cowl, and prepared to march forth into the jaws of death.

  
Steve would have understood - wouldn't have had it any other way. Bucky was sure of it.

 

\- - -

 

Bucky didn't know how he survived the crash, the ice, the years and years in near-stasis. It wasn't like he even wanted to. He had very little to live for when he went under, and he had even less to live for now that he had awoken in a strange and alien twenty-first century.

 

They tell him he was lucky to survive, that any other man wouldn't have. They tell him it was probably Zola's experimentation during his time as a POW which saved him.

 

It wasn't all good news. They'd had to replace his left arm with a metal one. Apparently he'd lost it to frostbite – too badly damaged to save once he'd been thawed out. Apparently the design was courtesy of some inventor called Stark. Not the Stark Bucky knew, but his son apparently. Which, wasn't that a mind fuck? Guy had one hell of a sense of humour though, Bucky found out, when he eventually examined his new metal arm and found a small miniature of Captain America's shield painted on the bicep. Bucky had just sighed and rolled his eyes and made a snarky comment about small minds being amused by small things. Tony had just slapped him on the back and grinned that he was learning the lingo pretty fast for an old man

 

When they dug Bucky Barnes out of the ice in the Arctic two years ago they barely knew what to do with him.

 

During the war, after the real Captain America fell, they knew exactly what they needed Bucky to do.

 

But now, in the twenty-first century, with the social and political landscape so radically different – with wars fought covertly in secret and public morale relatively unimportant, they were no longer so confident what his role should be.

 

Nonetheless, SHIELD kept him on the payroll. He was an operative after all, and a national hero to boot, even if he wasn't the one everyone thought he was.

 

And then New York happened, and everything changed.

 

Suddenly, America, and the world, needed a hero again.

 

And with Thor unreachable, Bruce Banner unstable, Tony Stark unreliable, and Clint and Natasha far more spies than superheroes, they knew they only had one real option.

 

-

 

So two years later, and Bucky finds himself living in Washington DC, close to Shield HQ (perhaps better known as the Triskelion, or whatever pretentious name they'd decided on – Bucky didn't really care for those details). The apartment was a SHIELD set up – a so-called 'safe house' even though Bucky knew it was bugged, monitored. He wasn't stupid. He imagined the surveillance was even ordered by Fury himself. And that stunning, overly friendly blonde who lived next door? Totally a SHIELD agent. Bucky could think of no other reason for why she was conveniently lurking around the doorways and hallways just as he was scheduled to come and go.

 

They still carted him (that is to say 'Captain America') out for parades, displays, and rousing speeches whenever necessary. But for the most part he was more covert. More low-key. Mostly running ops with the Strike team, and taking out whatever threats SHIELD decided needed eliminating.

 

To be honest, Bucky found that kind of work easier than the public patriotic displays and battles. After all, he was trained as a sniper, as a covert agent, to do all the dirty work they could have their squeaky clean and showy “Captain America” do. The dark underside to Cap's shining light. The night to his day. And for all they've continued to foist the uniform, the mantle, the title upon him since Steve's... death... old habits die hard, and Bucky always found himself more comfortable in the shadows.

 

Where Steve was all earnestness and motivational speeches, Bucky was the one standing in the background and monitoring peoples' responses. Two halves of a whole, really. At least, that's how Bucky used to think about it. It made him feel better about the darker parts of him, to feel like they were at least complimenting the blinding light that was Steve Rogers.

 

So Bucky was lonely. Every person he was in contact with was someone who had hidden motivations, someone to watch or monitor or even sometimes attempt to manipulate him into doing exactly what Fury (or SHIELD) wanted. So he tried not to get too close to his co-workers. He played along, being civil enough with them to get the job done but under no illusions that they were friends. Not even Natasha, as much as he'd like to imagine they could become friends. As much as the respect and fragile trust they'd forged in the Battle of New York had reminded him of the camaraderie of fighting alongside the Howling Commandoes, he simply didn't have enough information to go on to trust her. Especially not when half the time she seemed to be operating on her own separate mission whenever they were sent out as a team.

 

In fact, the first person he meets he felt was genuinely able to be trusted, genuinely just a good friendly guy and not a SHIELD plant, was a man named Sam Wilson, who he often ran into jogging the same route around the Lincoln Memorial in the mornings from time to time.

 

But before he had any further time to reflect on Sam Wilson, he was called up for an urgent mission in the Indian Ocean with the Strike team and Romanov. And really, everything flipped on its head from there.

 

\- - -

 

On his return from the mission, Bucky was furious. It was no surprise to him that Natasha had an alternate mission. That was just how covert ops went down, particular when you were working for as shady an organization as SHIELD. But it was one thing to have an alternate mission, and it was another one to put that mission ahead of the safety of hostages and your team. But when Bucky stormed into Fury's office, he was instead greeted with an explanation on Project Insight – three helicarriers linked to spy satellites, designed to preemptively eliminate threats.

 

Bucky knew Steve wouldn't like that. Hell, Bucky didn't really like it himself. It smacked too much of keeping people in line through fear, not protecting their freedoms.

 

Growing further disillusioned with SHIELD, but unwilling to cut ties with the one grounding force in this century, Bucky stormed out of the Triskelion to return to his apartment and think things over. But by the time he gets there, after stopping to run a few errands and exercise some of the stress and anger out of his system, Fury was waiting for him in his apartment, warning him that SHIELD was compromised and handing him a flashdrive before being shot at.

 

And then Fury was dead, and Romanov informed him that the assailant was a legendary assassin known only as the 'Winter Soldier'. Obviously they'd pinged someone's radar in a bad way, because suddenly they were being pursued by SHEILD and ambushed in broad daylight by the Winter Soldier.

 

They're driving along an overpass when it happens – attempting to get the Hydra mole, Sitwell – somewhere where they can extract the remaining intel on Hydra and Project Insight through him. One minute they're bickering, and the next the Winter Soldier ripping their car door off, pursuing them, and attempting to gun them down in the street while civilians run for cover.

 

There was a prolonged struggle. Bucky kind of found it sad that this was becoming commonplace for him, armed battles with terrorists or invading armies in the centres of large American cities.

 

It wasn't until he and the terrorist, codename 'Winter Soldier' were grappling unarmed that everything changed. The Winter Soldier's mask fell away, clattering to the asphalt and revealing the Winter Soldier's face for the first time.

 

“Steve...” Bucky asked, shocked. His hair was longer, still blonde but lank and greasy as if it hadn't been washed in months. Bucky couldn't be sure if the darkness around his eyes was all makeup, or if part of it was dark circles from lack of sleep.

 

“Who the hell is Steve?” the man spat out, in clumsy, Russian-accented English.

 

Bucky felt as if his heart had been ripped from his chest. When the SHEILD (or was it Hydra now?) team came to arrest him, it was like all his energy had been sapped from him - he didn't even care enough to put up fight anymore.

 

\- - -

 

It was barely hours later when Bucky saw him again – this time Steve facing off against him on a bridge on a helicarrier. Bucky was hit by a pang of how much the scene reminded him of Steve's heroic rescuing of him from that Hydra facility, a lifetime ago in nineteen forty-four. Except that time it was Bucky refusing to leave without Steve, and this time it was Steve refusing to leave without Bucky's corpse.

 

Steve was still trying to fight him, still trying to obey his orders blindly, as if programmed to, as if the order to kill Bucky was the only thing in his world.

 

All Bucky was trying to do was what Steve would have wanted him to do – to save millions of innocent civilians from totalitarian Nazi rule. And yet still Steve pursued him relentlessly.

 

It was then Bucky knew he just couldn't continue in this century, in his role as Captain America, knowing that Steve was out there and didn't remember who he was – out there trying to kill him even, just for doing what he knew Steve would once have wanted him to do. Steve, the one person who meant a damn to him, the reason he was doing all this. He just couldn't live with the knowledge that that person was completely gone, even the very essence and memory of him corrupted and defiled beyond all recognition.

 

So Bucky devised a test, to end it all one way or another. To put the final decision into Steve's hands – Steve who had been unable to make a single decision worth a damn for over seventy years now.

 

“I'm not gonna fight you... You are my friend...” Bucky choked out, as Steve landed blow after blow upon his face, “...Because I'm with you... till the end of the line”.

 

Steve's fist stilled, and Bucky saw Steve's face shift into a burst of recognition, quickly followed by a vulnerable expression horror. He looked almost wild. But in that moment, Bucky knew that his friend was in there somewhere – knew that he still had a reason to be in this godforsaken century.

 

\- - -

 

It was all pretty much blurred colors and blackness from then on, until he found himself waking up in a hospital with no knowledge of how he'd came to be there, at least. Sam explains he was found on the opposite side of the Potomac, literally hundreds of meters away from the wreck of the triskelion, in the opposite direction to the flow of the current. There was literally no way he could have washed up there.

 

Neither of them said 'Steve', but the unspoken name hung between them like an almost tangible presence.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at [Becauseyouaremymission](http://www.becauseyouaremymission.tumblr.com) for updates and painful angst.


End file.
